“Creative photography is anything that is not documentary.”

— Jonathan Vaines

Documentary to Creative.

The majority of images we see every day are documentary, from the simple selfie, to the carefully crafted landscape. There is absolutely a place for it and genres such as photo journalism rely on an accurate reproduction of what was in front of us. However once you start moving away from a straight representation you begin to enter the realm of creativity. In this section of my website I intend to explore creative techniques and ideas. I have dabbled with creativity and have now reached a point in my photography where I no longer want to take photos to please judges but more to please me. As you will see in my galleries I have achieved some awards, ‘been there done that’, in the bookmaking section you will see a new way for me to display my photographs so moving on I will try to work more towards sets of creative images that may well end up in a book. I am also taking part in a year long creative workshop with the RPS the results of which will be reflected in these pages.

In thinking about creative photography I realise there is a basic division, before and after you press the shutter. There are many opportunities for creativity before you take the picture. For example there are many workshops that will create a situation where you can take some great photographs that are different to the norm either with elaborate backgrounds, or costumes, special lighting, smoke machines or props. They can be very creative images but often remain documentary. That is not the type of creativity I want to explore here. I am more interested in what happens as you press the shutter, and afterwards, not just post processing but in camera techniques as well.